As the nation continues with the search for the abducted Chibok girls, former Minister of Education, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, has warned of the consequences of not finding and reuniting the girls with their families.
Ezekwesili, who spoke yesterday after a church service at Daystar Christian Centre, Lagos pointed out that the continued disappearance of the girls amounts to failure of governance, maintaining that they must be found by government.
Also yesterday, members of the Borno Elders Forum (BOEF) and state government decried the continued non-release of the 219 abducted Chibok schoolgirls two years after they were kidnapped by Boko Haram.
Meanwhile, the President of the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), Rev. Samson Ayokunle, has tasked Nigerian political office holders to lose their sleep until the abducted Chibok girls are released.
While addressing reporters yesterday at the 103rd Annual Convention of the church, Ayokunle alleged that the lethargy of the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan on the issue of the girls when kidnapped and his inability to equip the nation’s armed forces with weapons to confront the terrorists could not be divorced from the continued abduction of the girls.
He urged Nigerians to sustain the tempo of their prayers to God on behalf of the girls but with a caveat that God could not be coerced into answering prayers “at the time of man but at God’s time.”
Ezekwsili , one of the prime movers of the Bring Back our Girls (BBOG), does not share the pessimism of those who think that any or some of the 219 schoolgirls abducted two years ago from their school in Chibok town of Borno State would not be brought back home alive.
According to her, there are no facts to back the position of those who maintain this position.
Asked yesterday night on phone whether she was bothered about the position of former President Olusegun Obasanjo that all the girls may not be rescued alive, Ezekwesili, who led protesters to the official residence of the president last Thursday said: “It doesn’t bother me because we don’t have a counter-factual evidence that anything has happened to them. I think it is realistic to assume that some may have fallen ill, anything we say now will be basically speculation, so the real test is finding all, finding some, solving the puzzle of what exactly happened to our girls since April 14 (2014).”
She reiterated the position taken by the BBOG group that the government should tap into available intelligence the world over, locate the girls, and bring them back home.
Stopped by a human barricade of police women from accessing the presidential villa last week, Ezekwesili had reminded government that the country was no longer under military rule. The throng had on the second anniversary of the abduction gone to protest against the non-rescue of the girls .
Lamenting the non-release, the Secretary of BOEF, Alhaji Bulama Mali Gubio in an interview yesterday in Maiduguri said some people
within and outside government were”playing politics” with the lives and future of the girls and many women and others abducted in Borno State.
His words: “We are all pained and traumatised with the massive abduction and non-release of Chibok schoolgirls, including many other
women and girls still in the captivity of these insurgents.
“Our main concern is to rescue all the abducted women and girls, including the 219 girls from Chibok. They are our daughters and
grandchildren.We cannot continue to play politics with the abduction of the Chibok girls. Enough is enough.”
Ezekwesili, who spoke yesterday after a church service at Daystar Christian Centre, Lagos pointed out that the continued disappearance of the girls amounts to failure of governance, maintaining that they must be found by government.
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